Mini Trip to California

Last weekend, Rebecca and I hopped on an airplane and headed to California.

We decided that since David and Adam went in September to see Jared, Tori and Boston, that we should go in October.  :-)

We also got to see Grandma Ginia (and have a delicious dinner at Outback) and we saw Jeff for a few minutes.  (Hopefully we'll get to visit with Shawna next time).

We went to the Pumpkin Patch and even went through the Corn Maze.  It was just getting dark so that made it even more fun to go through the maze.  It was fun to visit the same Pumpkin Patch we used to take Jared and the other kids to when they were little.

On Saturday, after we stopped at Sputnik's Doughnuts for the best doughnuts in the world, we headed over to Santa Cruz.  It was a gorgeous day there.

Of course, we had to go to the Boardwalk so Rebecca and I could ride the Fireball and then Jared and Boston rode a few rides.

After an hour or two at the Boardwalk, we headed north (along with some Togo's sandwiches) to a little-known place that Jared discovered.  It's called Shark Fin Cove, named for the big rock that looks like a Shark Fin.

Boston loved the sand! 

We all had a great time watching the huge waves crash into the rocks.  It was definitely the perfect day.

 

 We headed back home on Sunday morning.  It was a short visit but tons of fun!!

Autumn Has Arrived

The weather finally cooled down and we had several days of rain.  I always like rain because then I can't work out in the yard and usually end up with some time to sew.  Since it's October, I made some Halloween pillow cases and a Halloween table runner.  I just couldn't resist the cute Peanuts materials for the pillow cases.

 

 

 

The fun thing about these pillow cases is that I used a new technique and made French seams which means there are no raw edges visible inside.  It worked pretty well and was super fast.

Another fun thing we did (while it was raining outside), Adam built a hand crank flashlight using the Tinker Crate he got this month. If you haven't tried the anything from Kiwi Crate, you should go to their website and see what they have to offer.....   www.kiwicrate.com   Adam loves it.  He has built little robot dudes with light up eyes using circuits.  He's made rockets that blast off using chemical reactions.  He built an awesome catapult.  And then, like I said, this month he made a hand crank flash light using resistors and diodes, etc.  He learns a lot (and so do I).  Like, did you know that Edison did invent Direct Current electricity (DC) but Tesla actually invented Alternating Current electricity (AC)?  The electricity gets to our house using AC and then there are converters in our various electrical appliances and electronics to change it to DC so the things work. 

Here is a picture of Adam with his flashlight. It looks way better in the dark but I couldn't really get a good picture of it.